Tag: reviews

bookmark_border“The Road to Roswell” by Connie Willis

Posted on by Elliott Evans
An incomplete collection of Connie Willis books, to say nothing of the dog.

Much of Connie Willis‘ novels can be pigeonholed as “romantic comedies”, where two young people thrown together into a difficult situation manage to overcome adversity and wind up falling in love. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it does make me wonder why none of her books have been made into movies. This kind of energetic romp plays very well with general audiences, and Willis’ “difficult situations” are usually sfnal in nature so they appeal to genre audiences as well.

Can two people find love while traveling through time for the History Department of a major university? Can two people find love while being psychically linked to somebody they dislike? Can two people find love while researching death and the possibility of an afterlife? Can two people find love while finding out the truth about interplanetary aliens on Earth and alien abduction?

That last one, of course is the premise of The Road to Roswell. Our main characters are actually abducted by aliens, but it’s not what you think! Everybody is still on Earth, and they really are on the road, and the road does lead to (and from) Roswell. The cast is what you might expect in any Western: a kidnapped damsel, a criminal on the run, a lying conman, a lonesome cowboy, a dishonest gambler, and a religious fanatic. Most are not played by the stereotype you might expect from that description, however. The criminal on the run is a space alien who resembles a tumbleweed. The fanatic follows the ‘religion’ of UFOlogy and quotes from its sacred texts about abduction and history.

This book is also about communication, and how hard it can be to communicate when it’s not just that you don’t share a language, but you don’t share basic concepts. What is alien, anyway? What is love? How do you tell somebody what you’re looking for and where to find it when you can’t describe it and you’re not sure where you are? This is the kind of thing that Connie Willis is really good at. I saw her speak at an SF conference long ago, and she is literally charming. Her unassuming language and subtle presentation style have a lovely way of suggetsing these deeper concepts bit by bit until suddenly your head is in the right place to really “get it”, youknowwhatimean?

I’ve enjoyed previous books from Connie Willis, and I enjoyed this one. I feel it bogs down a little in the middle, though. It’s part of the story, but even the characters start to get confused about what’s going on and what they are doing. This all pays off in the end, and the pace picks up towards the crashing conclusion where they all live happily (?) ever after (?). When’s the movie coming out?

bookmark_border“Polostan” by Neal Stephenson

Posted on by Elliott Evans
A shelf of books by Neal Stephenson

I am pleased that Neal Stephenson has finally convinced his publisher that a series of 300 page volumes is preferable to a single 900 to 1200 page tome. However, since the story contained in the first volume of Stephenson’s new “Bomb Light series” is really just the back story for the main character, it is difficult to review. I will say that this first volume is told with Stephenson’s characteristic flair, and with skillful arrangement. Exposition is accomplished through flashback, and history (and History) combines with forward narrative at a steady pace until we are all caught up and ready for the drama to shift into racing gear. Even when you are expecting the end of the volume to occur, since with physical books it is unavoidable to notice when it is near, the turn that breaks act one from act two is somewhat surprising. Leave it to Stephenson to create characters who surprise even themselves with their sense of dramatic turn!

Anyway, the “Polo” of the title really does refer to the game of Polo, as played on ponies, and the “stan” really does refer to a culturally unified geographic region (a capital-S “State”, if you will). The main character is a Wyoming pony-trainer outlaw communist operative hero of the highest order, and her manipulations bring the State of Polostan into existence just when she needs it to make the leap from state of mind into (fictional) reality.

There’s no way for me to tell where all this is going. Even Stephenson only vaguely refers to the “shape of this thing”. However, the characters are fully aware of Things that are Important, and I expect them to follow through on their personal histories with decision and aplomb.

This is a reasonably quick read, with a good foundation in world history and a strong plot with a relatable main character. Aurora is not a genius, but she is smart and brave. She does what she needs to survive, but she cares for others and tries to limit the harm to the uninvolved. A real hero! I hope she survives.

bookmark_borderI’m Starting to Worry About this Review of Jason Pargin’s Latest Book

Posted on by Elliott Evans

There’s a quote that I think about quite often from Jame’s Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgement Day: “There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” If there are messages in Jason Pargin’s latest novel, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, one of them is that there are no black boxes of doom but those we make for ourselves.

There’s a quote that I think about quite often from Christopher Nolan’s Inception: “An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.” If there are messages in Jason Pargin’s latest novel, I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, one of them is that the black boxes we make for ourselves can grow to define or destroy us.

The black box in the title of the novel is not the physical black box in the narrative of the novel. I’m not spoiling anything here, this is all explained quite early on in the novel. Applying that information to the philosophical black boxes in the rest of the novel is left as an exercise for the reader. If all that seems like a bit of a bait-and-switch con, keep in mind how much bait-and-switch happened with those two movies. The actor who played the main antagonist in the first movie plays the main white knight protector in the second? The eponymous inception is perpetrated not just on the target of the heist, not just on the instigator of the heist, but primarily on the perpetrator of the heist?

That said, Black Box is a bit of a bait-and-switch. When you find out the true meaning of the philosophical black box, and when you find out the true contents of the physical black box, your concepts of most of the main characters are switched and turned. This is not to relegate this novel to the trash heap of the “twist ending”. There is a twist beginning, a twist middle, a twist climax, and a twist denouement as well. One character who is cast as the only competent and experienced professional turns out to be kind of a nitwit. One character who is cast as a relentless machine turns out to be one of the most tragic and sympathetic characters in the whole story.

All the while, we are forced to contemplate how information is presented to us in this world, and how that affects the way we interpret it. A clandestine road-trip quickly becomes one of the most comically public endeavors on the planet. What the characters think they understand about each other becomes as unreliable as what we think we know about them.

This novel is not part of either of Jason Pargin’s two successful series. It is not a John, Dave, and Amy novel or a Zoey Ashe novel. It is good to see a writer branch out in new directions and work on things that are different. This is not a horror novel or a science fiction novel. These situations are all too real, these landscapes are too mundane, and these people are very real. Everybody makes mistakes and has regrets. There are no color-coded hats or billowing capes.

At times, mostly in the middle, this novel gets a little bogged down in conversations that are mostly exposition. At the end, most threads get tied up maybe a little too neatly. If those things are “flaws” in the novel, I’m not sure how Pargin could have fixed them. Maybe it’s not perfect, but it’s good. Very good. I continue to think that Jason Pargin is a novelist who started out strong and just keeps getting better. I recommend this book to all adult readers, and most YA. What I really don’t understand is why this author’s publisher hasn’t updated his promotional web site.

bookmark_border“Shock Induction”, by Chuck Palahniuk

Posted on by Elliott Evans

This is the latest novel by Chuck Palahniuk. It is a satire. The only reason this is not a non-fiction novel is because it is a satire. The truth is that everything this novel talks about basically does happen, just not in the absurd ways Palahniuk pretends it does for the purposes of this novel. Everything that “some shadowy but not actually secret at all group” is doing to young people in the novel is actually happening, just to different sets of young people than imagined in the novel, and in slightly different ways.

This book is a fast read. It is engaging and well written. It is confusing at times, but nobody reads Chuck Palahniuk expecting the narrative to go down like vanilla ice cream, right? Chuck Palahniuk is more like a double cone of rum raisin and rocky road, and the cone is cracked, and the day is hot and sunny; and there you are in the hot sun trying to ingest this mix of textures and flavors while constantly licking the outside of the whole thing to keep from getting any on your pants.

I do not think that Shock Induction will become one of my favorite Chuck Palahniuk books. Those are still Fight Club, Diary, and Rant. It’s pretty high up in the second tier, though. Holding it up against his other recent books, it’s tighter than The Invention of Sound, more palatable than Not Forever But for Now, and less terrifying than Adjustment Day. Maybe wait for this one in softcover if you’re not already the proud owner of a hardcover copy. I mean, it came out weeks ago.

bookmark_borderYou Are Too Sober for this Book Review

Posted on by Elliott Evans
Shelf of books authored Pargin, Jason

Having just come out in 2022 with a me-lauded new entry in the “John Dies at the End” series, Jason “David Wong” Pargin followed up in 2023 with a new “Zoey Ashe” novel titled Zoey is too Drunk for this Dystopia. I continue to believe that Pargin continues to make himself a better and better writer. I don’t know, maybe he just has better editors, but he knows enough to work with them to make better and better books, so good enough.

Anyway, in the first book of this series, protagonist Zoey Ashe inherits a vast fortune and shady business empire from her father. This inheritance comes with a group of her father’s helpers who are known collectively as “The Suits”. Now, Zoey is not stupid, and she is far from helpless, but she is way out of her depth in the first book, and knows it. The Suits do most of the heavy lifting, and Zoey mostly struggles to keep up while trying to direct the business onto a more noble path.

In this book, the fourth in the series, Zoey is really coming into her own. She is making the plans, and doing some of the heavy lifting. When helpers get sidelined, she knows that the rest of the team is looking to her to pick up the slack and recruit substitutes. She’s going from being the shocked owner of this thing, to being the real boss of this thing. Zoey still makes some mistakes, and some horrible decisions that turn out OK anyway, but she’s getting there, and she never forgets about her family, her cats, and her desire to make the world a slightly better place now that she has the resources to do so.

As a writer, Pargin has learned to subvert the reader’s expectations. It’s not that he’s trying to surprise you, but he’s trying to make you think about people. In the Zoey Ashe novels, protagonists aren’t always good, villains aren’t always bad, and red herrings sometimes turn out to be clues. The gun on the mantel in act 1 might be revealed in act 2 to display a flag that says “BANG!”, then in act 3 the flag is waved to summon help from a Thai sea pirate. You just ever know, but he’s urging you to look. Maybe the villain is really ridiculous and more naive than you. Maybe the protagonist has to do one awful thing to make sure another awful thing doesn’t happen. He’s urging you to look inside the suit and see the real person.

Later this year, Pargin is releasing yet another novel, and I think it is set in yet another series. I applaud whenever an author decides to branch out, but I hope this isn’t the last we read about Zoey. Both Pargin and his creations are still on their way to becoming real heroes, and I want to see what they are like when they get there.

bookmark_borderIf this review exists, you are in the wrong universe

Posted on by Elliott Evans

Last night, I finished reading the latest book in Jason “David Wong” Pargin‘s “John Dies at the End” series, If This Book Exists, You’re in the Wrong Universe. I liked it quite a bit.

This series, if you can find it in a store, typically gets shelved under “Horror”, but I don’t know. I found out about the first book while trying to watch all of the movies directed by Don Coscarelli. He mostly directs horror movies like Phantasm and Bubba Ho Tep, so I guess that makes the book that the horror movie was based on a horror book. There is plenty of horror in it, but it’s also very funny because there is plenty of humor in it, but it’s not a comedy because there is a good solid serious story under those other layers.

The thing about these books is that each one is better than the last. The horror is more involved. The humor is more pervasive and integrated. The story and the development of the characters is stronger, more personal, and more positive (no, really).

Interspersed with all the bloodshed and explosions, with all the running gags and one-liners, there is some intricate plotting and utterly awesome prose. I read some passages out loud to Sharon because I was just stunned by some of the wonderful things Pargin writes for his characters.

You don’ have to read all the books in order to appreciate any one of them. If you don’t think you have the patience to “get all caught up”, I say don’t bother. Jump straight to this last one even though it will spoil the shock that John doesn’t die at the end of the first one. It’s definitely the best of the series so far.

bookmark_borderBook Review – “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood”

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I’m a great big slobbering fan of Quentin Tarantino’s films, so when I saw that he had released a “novelization” of his most recent film, “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood” I added it to my shopping list.

Cover image courtesy of alibris.com

I greatly enjoyed reading this book, but one thing you need to know about it is that it is not the same story as the film. First of all, since it is a book there is a lot more of the story told from inside the heads of the characters. You see the world through their eyes and histories, rather than through your eyes and Tarantino’s camera. There are long expository sequences recounting the history of cinema and television, as regarded by different characters. These sequences inform the actions of the characters, but this exposition is not present in the film.

Actually, the book is edited so that the entire “point” of the story is different. If you utilize my theory that a well-crafted story ends on the point, then the end of the movie indicates that what Rick Dalton really wants to be is a real hero (like his friend Cliff Booth is), but the end of the book indicates that what Rick Dalton really wants to be is a real actor. This is a big difference.

Some of the Charlie Manson stuff from the movie is present in the book, but much of it has been edited out. Rick Dalton even makes some different choices in the book than he does in the movie, or at least that is what is implied. Anyway, the book is different than the film. I enjoyed both, but they are not exactly the same. I wonder if the book is the movie that Tarantino kind of wishes he could have released, but the movie is the movie that he knew he had to release to avoid bad reviews. Maybe Tarantino is just making fun of the way that novelizations are almost always different from the films.

The design of the book is really cool, mimicking the design of movie novelizations from the sixties. There are even ads for sixties books and movies in the back. I wish there was an ad for Red Apple cigarettes. I have so many old SF paperbacks with cigarette ads in them.

bookmark_borderRise and Fall of D.O.D.O., The

Posted on by Elliott Evans

A Novel by Stephenson, Neal and Galland, Nicole

Anybody who knows me well enough to read this here blog knows that I enjoy reading books by Neal Stephenson. Some people, including people I otherwise respect, consider him to be long-winded and tiresome. “Long-winded” I cannot argue against, but I find him to be endlessly entertaining.

DODO is 742 pages of epistolary diachronical action. It is chock full of manuscripts, emails, journal entries, after action reports, radio transcripts, running around, helicopters, car chases through the streets of Boston, boat rides, sex scenes, battles, beer drinking, quantum physics, holiday parties, and team meetings.

It took me more than a month to grind through it all, but I enjoyed the whole thing.

bookmark_borderMovie Review: SW ch.9 The Rise of Skywalker

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I liked it, overall. It is first and foremost definitely a Star Wars movie. It failed to do some things I was hoping it would do, but it also declined to do some things I was hoping it would not do, so I guess that’s a wash. It did do some things I was not expecting it to do, but that I am glad it did, so that’s a net positive. I suppose that I am most impressed with the way that it resolved some things that had to be resolved, but left open some things that were more important to leave open. Well done, Mr. Abrams. There are still plenty of people who aren’t going to like this on its own, and people who aren’t going to like it as the finale to a 9 film series, but I think it’s good.

bookmark_borderMovie Review: Knives Out

Posted on by Elliott Evans

I am an unabashed Rian Johnson fan. His first three films, Brick, The Brothers Bloom, and Looper, are part of my permanent library. I’m not sure why Disney thought it would be a good idea to have him lead a Star Wars main line film, but I admire what he tried to do, dragging the franchise in a new and unexpected direction. Knives Out is a return to what Johnson does best: Twisty little stories about people who’ve made bad choices.

I don’t mean to say that Knives Out is one of those mysteries that misleads you every step of the way. In fact, it’s one of those that lays out nearly everything you need to know, just may be you don’t realize it at the time. If you’ve seen the trailer for it, you know that a veritable wreath of murder weapons is in view for much of the film. The rules of drama dictate that something should happen, but how? Is it just a rack of red herrings?

The dialog is sharp, and yet realistic. The acting is enthusiastic, and yet not inhumanly hammy. The set is gothic, and yet not baroque. The detective is smart, and yet not brilliant. The protagonist is a good person, and yet not an angel. The script is funny, and yet not comedic. This movie walks the finest tightropeimaginable, and it never wobbles.

Each time I watch a Rian Johnson film, I feel like had I never watched one before, I’d go back and find out what I’ve been missing. See this one. Watch his other films. Look forward to the shape of the plot. Pay attention. I promise you will find the experience rewarding.